An Open Letter To CMOs, Part 1

Dear CMOs:

First and foremost, you have my utmost respect.

While I have never been a CMO myself, I do have a lot of real-world marketing (and advertising) experience, I was a featured writer for the CMO Network of Forbes for nearly 10 years, I have interviewed well over 2,000 leaders just like yourself, I coach and counsel CMOs and I have very close relationships with many of your peers.

So while having never served in the role per se, I know the role quite intimately. I know of the struggles and challenges you go through on a daily basis. I know all about the daily ride you go on. Boy, do I ever.

Ok, just wanted to set the table for those who I have not had the pleasure of getting to know. I like to joke that I collect CMOs like I used to collect sports cards. As a kid, my brother Greg and I spent arguably just slightly less than the GNP of Sri Lanka on football, baseball, basketball, and hockey cards.

Of course, none of said cards still exist today else my brother and I would be living in the lap of luxury in, well, Sri Lanka.

But I digress.

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The Five Main Challenges Facing CMOs Today

From employee advocacy to peak data, let’s lay down the big challenges CMOs around the world are facing right now – and what they can do to improve their marketing in each area.

1. Understanding and embracing the power of employee advocacy

Empower your employees and they will power your brand. In today’s hyper-connected world, brands simply must embrace new ways of engaging with customers online, and your employees can help if you’ll let them. If you’re not looking for ways to involve your employees, then you are missing a huge opportunity.

Your employees are the best way to humanize and personalize your brand… and truly the best way to scale relevant, contextual content creation

Did you know that employee created content (ECC) receives eight times more engagement than content shared from the company itself? On top of that, employee content extends brand messaging by over 500%. Crazy, right? So why aren’t more companies getting employees engaged in content creation? It’s well known that companies with engaged employees outperform their peers; involving employees in content creation can help to create a sense of common purpose.

2. Brand personality and connection

It’s time to stop making excuses, and start bringing in-person social skills to the digital world. All of the positive benefits are out there waiting, and it’s up to us to make the effort to realize them.

3. Delivering a truly omni-channel, integrated experience

This requires you to connect the dots internally as well—which means connecting your employees so they can collaboratively deliver that seamless experience. You can’t be omni-channel to the outside, if you don’t take down the silos and become omni-channel inside. We often hear a lot about omni-channel marketing from an external viewpoint, but I think it’s also important to look at it from an internal perspective. Is your internal communication structure helping to build consistent company messaging and culture, or is there infighting about who handles what?

Before an organization can have an effective omni-channel marketing strategy, it’s important to examine the internal communication structure. I think the CMO should be heading this up, because brand messaging (whether internal or external) is really a marketing function, even though there are different departments that feed into it. However, very few companies have a CMO who has broad enough oversight of everything that’s happening within a company regarding brand messaging. They’re in charge of consumer messaging, but brand messaging also affects employees and vendors.

4. Overabundance of data

CMOs need to always remember that data will only take you so far; it’s judgment and instinct that will win the day. My advice is to make absolutely certain that your CMO and CIO have close ties, and learn to not only “play nice”, but to do their best to understand the vital role they play as a team. The kind of communication required to deliver the ultimate customer experience needs to run across and run through both channels. For them to be successful requires an enterprise-wide cultural shift.

5. Programmatic and digital spam

Brands are running headlong into brand equity destruction through incessant programmatic and digital spamming. The rise of retargeting and digital yield techniques is killing brands, and brand equity for the long-term. It makes me wonder how many brand managers, and more importantly CMOs, bother signing up for their own email distribution lists, or shop their brands from an anonymous browser to experience what their customers are being subjected to. Customer experience is no longer simply about product, delivery, and service, but about how the customer experiences our marketing.

My hope is that as the new marketing world matures, building better customer relationships will become everyone’s primary objective, from sales, to marketing, to customer service — even IT departments. If that’s the true objective, then “customer relationships” truly has a chance to be the x-factor in achieving Return on Relationship and enhancing ROI for the long term.

#RonR … #NoLetUp!

Originally posted at TedRubin.com

IBM Delivers Online Merchants New Cognitive Capabilities That Turn Commerce Insights into More Powerful Customer Experiences

CommerceInsights_Social Tile

Watson Analytics Allows Brands to Use Everyday Language to Identify Hidden Data Connections and Drive Better Business Performance

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today (Dec 3rd) announced new commerce capabilities that help online merchants easily gain the insights needed to evaluate category and product performance and make quick and effective merchandising decisions. Leveraging cognitive capabilities from Watson Analytics, IBM Commerce Insights allows practitioners to gain a real-time view into customer behavior and market factors that are impacting their business, proactively identify opportunities and roadblocks and take informed actions to increase sales and business performance.

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This is the Top Publication Shared By CMOs

Leadtail is a social strategy firm that has built a panel of over 1,000 B2B and B2C CMOs and marketing executives located in North America and active on Twitter that develops social insights reports on CMOs and other decision makers.

They recently released the results of analysis of over 60,000 Tweets during the month of October and determined Forbes to be the #1 publication shared by CMOs during that month. As a Forbes contributor myself, specifically to the CMO Network, I am not surprised to see it come in #1 for we have a great group of contributors for sure.

Here’s a quick legend regarding the colors and what they represent followed by the full list:

Blue = Did not rank in the Top 50 in the previous month

Green = Moved up in ranking over last month

Red = Moved down in ranking over last month

Black = No change over last month

CMO_Domains_October_Chart

 

The CMO Technology Conundrum And How To Solve It

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” —Bill Gates

Given the vast array of technology, data points, channels, and tactics available, new technology and marketing automation has stepped in to help CMOs bring all their activities together and support the delivery of the ultimate customer experience. But has it really helped so far? Or has it simply created another overwhelming challenge for the CMO who now must become a technology expert to apply it efficiently?

The above is an excerpt from a recently-released guide the Oracle Marketing Cloud created along with The CMO Club entitled the CMO Solution Guide to Leveraging New Technology and Marketing Platforms. The guide, which I co-authored, contains results of a survey of over 100 marketing leaders plus the five key solutions we identified to help CMOs and marketing leaders tackle the challenge of providing a seamless customer experience across all marketing channels via the use of technology – the right technology that is.

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Why CMOs Need To Remember They Are Consumers, Too

Note: While this article is written directly toward CMOs, make no mistake about it, CEOs should heed this advice, too.

The time has come. The time to remind the leaders of marketing departments across the land that they are also consumers, too and as such they need to care about consumers and the business they bring to the bottom line; and that they need to care about things that go way beyond a marketing plan.

In other words they need to remember they are people, too, just like the person on the other end of that cash register, email, Facebook post, advertisement and on and on and on.

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Why Relationships & Advocacy Are Keys to Social Success (Webinar via @EngageSciences)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNsNdk1yOsE

 

October 23, 2013 by engagesciences

On Tuesday October 22 Richard Jones, the CEO of EngageSciences was joined by Ted Rubin, globally recognised as the most followed CMO on Twitter for a live webinar on “Why Relationships and Advocacy Are The Keys to Social Success”.

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Customer Loyalty Management via the Customer Service Silo

All of your employees work in the marketing department, at least to some extent, and they need to understand the role they play. But to create a strong foundation for customer loyalty management, there are a few departments within your company that absolutely need to sync with marketing. Your customer service department is the most important.

Here are four ways you can leverage your customer service team to effectively manage customer loyalty, build relationships, and turn customers into fans. Think Return on Relationship… because there is no better time than when your customers reach out to you.

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A “Must Attend” for heads of Marketing: @TheCMOClub #CMOsummit

 

 

The evening of October 08, 2013 – October 10, 2013 – Los Angeles, CA

I have personally attended 7 Summits and have ALWAYS left wishing there was another I could attend the very next month. Looking forward to Keynoting and discussing Influencer Marketing with Tami Cannizzaro and Bryan Kramer

Stay Connected, networked and work with your peers, behind closed doors… No vendor selling permitted

120+ Heads of Marketing to Attend with 40 Leading Sessions

What Marketing Executives get from the Summit

1. Solve your biggest challenges as a marketing executive

2. Build you rnetwork and start lifelong relationships with CMO’s

3. Learn high impact ideas for leading your marketing team and buildling credibility with your CEO & Board

4. Recharge your battery and get inspired for success in 2013 and 2014!

By far the most valuable CMO event I attended so far in 2013. The most engaged group of CMOs I know” – Paula Puelo, CMO, Michaels

Every CMO Club Summit I attend I end up with 2-3 year impacting ideas for my company. Nothing is better than getting great ideas from your peers without vendor selling” – Evan Greene, CMO, The Recording Academy

Engaged marketing heads, focused on helping each other, behind closed doors. Great inspiration as well” – Fred Neil, VP Marketing, The Home Depot

I have never been in the same room with so many bright marketers and leaders, all focused on helping each other. Unlike anything else I have ever attended. The post summit engagement with other CMOs is amazing as well.” – Nancy Smith, CMO, iRobot

Nothing challenges me more to improve as a leader to my team, then seeing what others are doing to motivate and lead their organizations – Thanks to The CMO Club for creating a real community of CMOs.” – Ashley Sheetz, CMO, Gamestop.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjZmToqn4F0